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“One thing they don't tell you about when someone you love dies because of a sickness is that death happens in a million different ways in the lead up to the actual moment.” -Jessica Johns, Bad Cree
Why is Jessica John's incredible debut horror novel actually a heartbreaking mediation on grief?! (P.S. please read BAD CREE)
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Round 1 Match 54
Pick your favorite gen read:
When the Angels Left the Old Country by Sacha Lamb
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
Book summaries below:
“We had her forever and only a minute. She was alive, full, present, and then she shapeshifted into nothing. There was no measure of time that made it make sense.” - Jessica Johns, Bad Cree
“Well, that’s a good thing, isn’t it? That the industry is dying?” I say. “I don’t think it’s dying,” Kassidy says. “Just moving. And they really don’t give a shit about what they leave behind, do they?” I think about the empty roads leading to old, abandoned well sites, the gutted woods clear-cut to make way for their trucks, now closed up and leading to nowhere. “And all the so-called partnerships oilfield companies made with a bunch of the reserves. Saying they would get people jobs in exchange for access to reserve land. They got the land, sucked it dry, then abandoned it and all the people they made promises to when they couldn’t use it anymore,” Tracey says.
-- from Bad Cree, by Jessica Johns
An Indian dying is like a balsam fir getting chopped down. Trees for miles and miles feel the pain under the soil. They send their reserve nutrients through the root network to the stump, which closes over with bark like a scab. Eventually, the stump turns into a nursery, a home for new growth, for something else to take shape. This isn’t the same as healing or being reborn, but it’s the closest we’ll ever get.
-- from Bad Cree, by Jessica Johns
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Have a book recommendation from me. If you're looking for something by an Indigenous author that will make you feel all the feelings and deals with grief and family, this is your book. Please read it, it's fabulous. Jessica Johns, the author that you are ♥️. I bought it on a whim at a charming little indie bookstore in Knoxville and I'm so glad I did.
Bad Cree was excellent but also it was really, genuinely terrifying, and one of the first books I've read in recent contemporary fiction, where the exploration of grief and unsettling horror is successfully mixed together, instead of feeling heavy-handed. By which I mean yes, the prose is beautiful, and yes there are allegorical undertones, but also, yes the hauntings are very real, and yes, it gets chillingly scary in the night sequences.
Bad Cree by Jessica Johns
This is a horror novel about Mackenzie, who has started having increasingly realistic dreams that she can sometimes bring things back from, including waking up from a dream of drowning actually with water in her lungs. The dreams center on a camping trip she had with her sister before her death, and when she also receives a text from her dead sister in the waking world, she decides to return home to her family and community to get to the bottom of what is happening to her and what happened to her sister.
I liked this one! I will say it feels more like literary fiction with horror elements rather than straight horror, but I've mentioned before I'm a huge baby when it comes to horror, so it worked for me. I think a good comparison would be When No One is Watching by Alyssa Cole- both novels do have a greater, more traditionally spooky force at work, but the real focus is on the creeping horror of loss and isolation brought upon by individualistic, capitalist culture that separates us from our communities. The creature haunting Mackenzie and her family was brought here by capitalist greed, but since the people who enacted that greed are protected from it by their social mobility, it has instead turned towards the vulnerable people who don't have that freedom as a result of centuries of disenfranchisement.
Another major theme is of course grief and how isolation from our communities can make us more distanced from ourselves as well and keep us trapped in that grief and never fully processing it. The two themes do influence each other enough to be fundamentally unentangleable. The isolation brought on by this culture creates depression which in turn creates more grief, creating more isolation. The cyclical nature of this intergenerational trauma is then reflected in the cycles of Mackenzie's dreams. She experiences them over and over again, unable to figure out a way to save herself or her sister, just as these systems trap people into cycles with no clear escape.
Which is why I'm a bit more forgiving of my biggest issue with the novel- like most literary fiction, the plot really meanders to the point where it can often feel like nothing is happening. Which is I don't like literary fiction. But here, it feels intentional for the characters to be stuck and need to sit together and process things before they can actually confront the creature. It still creates quite a slow pace, but because there is a sense of purpose to it, it's not an agonizing one.
Overall, it's a pretty good book. The main character can often be frustrating in how frequently she repeats her mistakes, but again, that feels like it contributes to the structure. It's not a fun book to read, but it is a high quality one. 4.5⭐️
